Ilford PAN 100 In ADOX APH09/Rodinal 1+50 - Results

I thought I would post this, as searching on the internet yielded very little on the PAN films. I have used the 400 once, made some buildings with spitfires flying from behind, they look like pencil drawings when enlarged when developed in microphen last year, grain size was huge, the examples are below the PAN 100 ones. I now only have one more of my old rolls of PAN 100 to use up, and a roll of 400.

I didn't think they would be AMAZING but I wanted grain as part of the art. Money is extremely tight and with paper nearly depleted so i thought I would add the results of this to my college portfolio (my interview is wednesday) to show how grain can be used for artistic effect, the only pictures I have in it with visible grain, these are flatbed scans of the prints, the scanner is not the sharpest of scanners and it looks like a couple of highlights in some areas have been blown but these are not visible on the prints. It was shot on an overcast and slightly rainy day, I used a 200mm zoom lens. I developed in rodinal 1+50 for 13 minutes, inverting the tank every minute. APH 09 is the pre-WWII formula of rodinal as far as I know, the actual dilution was 1 + 40, but put 1 + 50 so people using search engines can find it, also what would be used with the modern post WWII rodinal.

My results were as follows:

1. More grain than expected for an ISO 100 film with lack of a silver solvent, with the PAN this was expected.
2. Gives a very 'retro' look to photos when developed 1+50 in rodinal, the tonality is retro-looking.

Photo 1: A bird on a head statue near the abbey in bath, the bird had decided to go to the toilet on it, I did not notice this until my housemate pointed it out,
it was 'frozen' coming out on the photo!
Photo 2: A seagull making a 'call' from the top of a streetlight, grain is very pronounced in this photo.
Photo 3: A seagull flying over, under exposed by a stop. Attempting to keep a decent shutter speed for birds was difficult due to my zoom lens F 4.5 and the lighting.
Photo 4: A seagull in flight. My favourite photo of the lot, grain is visible in this photo as well, it looks retro especially the building.
Photo 5: The same photo as 4, enlarged a little more, still printed on 5x7 paper.
Photo 6: A Baby seagull with its wings folding away. Contrast is a bit high, all I had available to me by the time I got to this one at the moment is grade 3 paper.
Photo 7: The baby seagull again
Photo 8: The baby seagull with food in its mouth, shutter speed was 1/60, it sucked the food into its mouth while the shutter was open, you can see a faint blur where the piece of food had been. I wasn't sure at the time if I had caught it or not.
Photo 9: My friend's young girl, we met up as I had nearly exhausted the roll.

The other photos I did not see print-worthy so did not print them.

Seeing as there is very little on the internet to do with the PAN films, and less so with rodinal results I thought I would share these. If you are looking for a lot of visible grain, and a 'retro' look, go for it! Seeing as rodinal is what I would call an 'honest' developer when it comes to grain it seemed fitting
In D76 PAN 100 looks quite good in a party setting with a flash, but does not enlarge bigger than 5x7 without the image looking muddy, again it gave the photos a very retro look, of the fine grained type that looked very nice when the prints were copper-toned, grain becomes visible at 8x10.
Photos visible below (not in chronological order, plus digitising has reduced the amount of grain visible slightly):

Last edited by jm94; 08-26-2012 at 07:50 AM. Click to view previous post history.

The PAN 400 Spitfire photos are below for reference also, taken July? 2011. My zoom lens is not powerful, so I then lifted the enlarger head near enough 11 x 14 size to put the photos onto 5x7 paper, with the exception of the spitfires behind behind the house, taken at belton house, grantham; That one was enlarged to 8x10. Shutter speeds were between 1/500 and 1/1000 depending on the shot. The negatives had been under fixed and showed alot of degradation by the time new prints were made, having given away the old ones. This will also show never to reuse your fixer for longer than you should as I was doing when these were taken and still a beginner in the darkroom. They have been refixed to stop further degradation. I now use fixer one-shot for film. Some of my other important negatives survived, the ones that had used fresh chemicals.